When Austin Delisle joined his Fort Kent teammates during intermission of Tuesday night’s Class C North boys soccer final against top-ranked and undefeated Orono at Hampden Academy, he was confident the ongoing scoreless stalemate would not last.
Then the senior midfielder backed up the belief with his own foot.
Delisle redirected a Kaden Theriault cross into the net with 31:48 left in the second half, and the Warriors held on for 1-0 victory over Orono for their third regional championship in the last five years.
“We battled from start to finish and this was a battle from start to finish,” Delisle said. “At halftime we knew we were going to score, it was just a matter of time.”
The regional title was the first for Fort Kent since the Warriors won back-to-back Class C North crowns in 2017 and 2018, and the Warriors will be seeking their first state championship since 2010 on Saturday when they face two-time defending state champion Waynflete of Portland at Presque Isle Middle School
Second-ranked Waynflete (13-2-2) defeated top-seeded Mt. Abram of Salem 3-2 in Tuesday’s Class C South final.
The meeting will be a rematch of Waynflete’s 3-1 victory over Fort Kent in the 2018 state championship contest. The Warriors will be seeking their first state championship since 2010.
North top seed Orono ends its season with a 13-1-1 record.
“It was a great game by both teams, and I was telling some of the guys at half that it was going to come down to one moment and it really did,” Orono senior goalkeeper Javier Alicea Santiago said.
Fort Kent, which also knocked off an undefeated team in the semifinals with a 3-1 win over No. 3 Mount View of Thorndike, controlled much of the play during the first half but Orono’s defensive front of seniors Tommy Owen, Chase Campbell and Tyler Kenney and junior Lucas Allen prevented the Warriors from generating many threatening chances against Santiago.
“I was pretty confident that at some point we’d break through because we were creating opportunities and the guys know that we’re not going to stop until we create more and more chances until we get the goal,” fourth-year Fort Kent head coach Kalusha Kotes said. “That’s what we did tonight.”
Orono came out strong during the initial minutes of the second half, but Fort Kent’s persistence eventually led to a sequence that earned the Warriors back-to-back corner kicks.
Soon after the second corner kick Theriault crossed the ball from the right wing toward the goal crease from where Delisle one-timed the ball into the net for the only goal of the match.
“It was crazy, definitely one of the craziest goals I’ve scored in my career,” said Delisle, who had scored three goals in Fort Kent’s previous two postseason victories. “It got by a few defenders and I just tapped it in with my foot.”
The speed at which the play developed left Santiago without time to react to Delisle’s close-range redirection.
“It was a good cross, a good finish, a good goal,” Santiago said. “I don’t know if we could have defended it any better than we did, but it happened and I think despite the goal we fought really hard for the last 30 minutes and I couldn’t be more proud of my team.”
Orono did quickly attempt to answer, with a header by freshman Will Francis cleared away from the goal crease by a Fort Kent defender among the Red Riots’ best chances.
But Fort Kent also continued to get strong defense from wing fullbacks Pierson Carron and Walker Marquis and center backs Griffin Sibley and Ethan Daigle in front of sophomore goalie Drew Deschane, and the Warriors finished off their four-game run through the C North tournament outsourcing their opponents by a combined 16-1.
“Orono had some good opportunities, but the guys literally put their bodies on the line,” Kotes said. “They were blocking shots, diving, sliding and they did a good job. I keep telling the guys that as much as we want to score, we have to put the same amount of energy into defense because defensive teams win championships.”
Fort Kent finished with a 19-10 shots advantage with Deschane making four saves to preserve the shutout and Santiago making seven stops for Orono.
